ok I got that to work and I now have plus signs "+" padding the remainder of the field which is what I want. Now I want to turn these "+" into blank spaces somehow. I originally tried the following command
COPY TO e:\output.txt DELIMITED WITH ""
but that only served to remove the trailing blanks from LOCATION. I thought having the "+" I could somehow transform them to blank spaces.



>Uh. Timothy? I missed the keyword "cursor" (between the keyword "into" and the cursor name "newcursor") and I reversed the sequence of the last two parameters of the padr() function. I was obviously having a dyslexic moment. You don't really expect a quick post to run, do you ;) Besides, debugging is half the fun, no?
>
>This might work. Bear in mind that I don't have your table, nor would I name the fields as you did ;)
>
>

select acct, padr(alltrim(location)),15,"+") as location, label into cursor newcursor

>
>>mike can you recheck your select statement, vfp didn't like it.
>>
>>>Select acct, padr(alltrim(location),"+",15) as location, label into newcursor
>>>COPY TO ...
>>>
>>>>That was the one I didn't try, I was almost out of choices!
>>>>PS, what if I wanted output to look like:
>>>>811AD,SUDBURY++++++++,B021193
>>>>note the '+' being spaces.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>Try:
>>>>>COPY .. to .. delim with ""
>>>>>
>>>>>>I have the below data in a table acct(5), location(15),label(5)and I want to create the txt file shown below. Do I use copy to output type sdf, delimited, delimited with ",", not having too much luck creating what I want.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>"output.txt" =
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B021193
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B020910
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B022401
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B023021
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B023207
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B024342
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B024341
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B024382
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B024351
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B024352
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B020809
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B021653
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B023958